A few weeks ago, PPCSG.com had the opportunity to have a chat with John
Starkweather about Windows Mobile as he shares his thoughts with us on the entire Windows Mobile experience. John is a product manager in the Mobile & Embedded Devices division from Microsoft.

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[Shane]
Hi John, thank you for taking time out for this chat, over in Singapore we have many users using PDAs with the Windows Mobile platform, and also a growing number in Asia. Since the first Windows CE launch to the highly praised Windows Mobile 5.0 and now the soon to be released Windows Mobile 6, what drives Microsoft to reinvent itself constantly in the mobility arm of Microsoft?

[John Starkweather]
Thank you Shane, it is my pleasure to share more with you and your users about the Windows Mobile platform.

When we first launched the Pocket PC, many of the things that we have learnt from the PC industry we brought to Windows Mobile. Initially a lot of people thought that we were trying to shove a big PC into a small device.

That was not our strategy. Our strategy was to give you the power to run many of those richer applications to do many of those things that you were only able to do on a PC but fit for a small screen.

The US Census Bureau 500,000 unit purchase is one of the largest single purchase of it’s kind for a PDA device that no other platform the US census bureau could have chosen. RIM does not offer that kind of technology. Symbian does not offer that kind of technology, at least not without significant investment on their part. So what's happening there is that organization are now starting to shift their thinking, they use to think about a Windows Mobile device, a PDA or smartphone just as a voice tool and do some emails on it. Now they are beginning to recognize that the smartphone or PDA as a computer and they want to be able to work with it and manage it like a PC. The day is not far off where large organization will not only hinge on PC where they have the lock down of their software image on it. We see it on the smartphones as well, we are beginning to see that change. Microsoft will continue to be a dominant player in that market as the change continues.

Today Windows Mobile 5 devices have a vastly improved synchronization application for Windows Mobile 5. It is called the Windows Mobile Device Center. When you plug in a Windows Mobile device a little bubble pops up and ask if you would like to install a Windows Mobile device center that makes it much easier to use. Instead of having the Active Sync experience that you have today, it is similar to File Explorer or Windows Explorer. It is usable but by people whom are early adopters, who are the techie and geeky people and it is rather intimidating ActiveSync today for others.

Windows Mobile Device’s interface is much cleaner and if you have new photos, music or media on your PC it would ask you if you would like to move them over to your device. Also, we released a SDK kit for developers to write special applications that can be built right into the Windows Mobile Device Center on Vista. There are a couple of operators that has built solutions right into that application so that when you plug in your device it will recognize your device. For example Mobile operator could have services built in there. You can go in there to pay your bill for your phone, buy ringtones, a variety of things. We know of operators customizing things built into the Windows Mobile Device Center. Windows Mobile Device Center comes from Windows Update service from the PC and because it comes from an update service. When people leave that update service on, it will automatically send updates. So what happens now is that new operators have the services built into the Windows Media Center. It will automatically download the services to the Windows Mobile Device Center and unto the device.



[Shane]
Windows Mobile is known as a great business tool and entertainment tool already. Do you see another version that is probably more entertainment-centric rather than what it is known as a business tool?

[John Starkweather]
Traditionally many of our partners have focus on more business customers from Microsoft heritage. We have a large base of business customers, people who use our server. People that use different third party applications on their PCs were very interested on taking an applications to run Mobile devices so we sold a lot of devices to these people of these types of organizations. But we are seeing a growing interest by OEM and some operations to build media-centric phones, very much targeted at people interested in music and video.

As you know we have a mobile version of Windows Media player that ships on all our Windows Mobile devices for many years that supports music of different types of format, streaming, videos and applications like Slingmedia or Orb that always works on the platform. You are also able to download music from a number of music subscriptions services. A lot of different options, but you know, it has been a little tucked away down in the depths of the platform and we are starting to see more interest with the OEMs in particular that wants to bring this to the surface saying that this is a great music phone and great business phone that is ideal to fit your work style and also your lifestyle.



[Shane]
I think most of the time, a lot of people who uses the Windows Mobile platform do not know what's in their Windows Mobile device because often people would perceive it first as a business tool than entertainment/media device that it is. There are quite a number of features that is already built-in and it would also take OEMs and some operators to help market this differently.

[John Starkweather]
Yes there are quite a few examples, like T-Mobile from Europe. Several years ago was pushing music down their SDA line of phones, their SDA phones that HTC put music buttons on the device and Cingular has been selling advertising through the devices. The Windows Mobile platform is by itself an entertainment device already and has a host of features that most users do not see it but operators and device manufacturers are trying to bring this to the surface.



[Shane]
John, do you see the Windows Mobile Phone Edition and Smartphone Edition merging together in the future or will they continue to occupy in two forms?


[John Starkweather]
We will absolutely merge the platforms. We have been on a slow steady migration for a number of years now. Underneath the hood all the APIs are the same, so a company building a device or an application or service, all the hooks in the software where someone can collect pieces of application and build an interesting application or service are all the same. Whether using a touch screen or non-touch screen device in any form factor, all the same. About 95% of the code, the actual software code the 1's and 0's that our developers create, 95% of that are identical.

We have spoken about this a little bit that we are very much will be merging this two platforms. What will happen is that, you will have applications that run across all of them. You will not have to think about which version do I have. We actually think that what will happen is that you will actually see a wider range of device type even because of that. It is much easier to do a variety of different devices and the OEM will have really one major software image and build a wider range of form factors.



[Shane]
This has been hotly debated subject recently since the announcement of the Apple iPhone. Do you see the iPhone a serious challenge to the Windows Mobile platform?

[John Starkweather]
Before the iPhone actually comes to market and actually see it and actually makes it through operator's trial, it is hard to talk about and try to compete with a ghost. There are a lot of interesting things they are talking about, on the touch screen. I don't know that is quite believable yet until we actually see that.

The Pocket PC and Windows CE have been using touch screens and the software has just been getting better and better. There are a lot of things that we have learnt in the past that do give us an overall feel of what the consumer actually wants. Our feedback has been that the consumer would prefer a tactile feel of the buttons than opposed a touch screen, therefore our experience has been that. We'll see when it is launched.



[Shane]
Will we see a Windows Mobile device as an extension of the PC?

[John Starkweather]
Yes. However we are will see that process over the next couple of years, but we are seeing business asking for it now and they are starting to do some early things with us. We can talk about later this year and into next year we are going to help accelerate that process.



[Shane]
As China is a major emerging economy, they will need lots of devices. Do you see Windows Mobile devices to grow by a huge percent?

[John Starkweather]
We have been working very closely with China Mobile. We have done a specialty messaging solutions for them, we are working on a couple of customize devices with them together with some OEMs and it will be very interesting this year with China Mobile.

But overall about cost, we see prices of devices dropping. There are a couple of significant things that we have done in these last couple of years working with Texas Instruments on bringing our Windows Mobile platform to work on lower cost hardware. At ITU, Amoy announced that at least 3 devices that run on Windows Mobile based devices that will run on feature phone hardware. So far Windows Mobile is the only smart OS that can run on feature phone, which are single core chip devices that everybody else had in the past. Windows Mobile as well had required duo chipsets which was a much more expensive hardware so to bring the actual cost of that device down it's rather difficult.

Some OEMs do it better than others, some of them more efficient than others but overall if you can dramatically reduce the hardware requirement, you can more quickly bring devices to market. So we expect to see, hopefully in Asia, phones that are dramatically less expensive, in markets where operators are doing some subsidy.

2007 will be the year that you will see a Windows Mobile phone for free with a contract. You will see a lot of them under US$100. We saw that this year with the Motorola Q, was under US$100/- it was US$99 for sometime. We see a lot of other devices in the same range, like the Samsung SGH-i600 or the HTC Excalibur that are under US$200. We saw one in Germany, a candy bar Windows Mobile that was retailing below the Euro $70, so they are coming down. I know in your neighborhood in Asia there are far fewer subsidized handsets, but overall the prices are dropping worldwide.



[Shane]
Where do you see Windows Mobile in the next 5 years?

[John Starkweather]
If you believe in the analyst numbers, there will be more than 2 billion phone subscribers. There is 1.3 to 1.4 billion today. That is a dramatic growth, with that you will see more people become their first computing experience on a phone and our goal is to make that as rich as feature rich as possible. We would like to see people having to really access the internet on the device, retrieve different services to do many things in 5 years on a mobile device people thought that you can only do on a PC today. Today we have 50 OEM, 150 mobile operators in 55 countries s and we will continue to have big numbers like that. There will be 10 -100 million of devices being sold. I think overall the smartphone market is just going to explode. Today the feature phone market is where a lot of the action is. But I think as more and more people recognize and realize the different types of things you can do on a phone, they are going to want those additional features as prices keep coming down, as prices will not be a bearer as it is today.



[Shane]
There are a lot of fans out there who say, “Once you go Windows Mobile you can't go back to anything else because of what it offers”. What do you think?

[John Starkweather]
Well I would like to thank everyone who has been a fan and user of Windows Mobile. We certainly have learnt a lot, we made some early mistakes. There are many people who were loyal, hopefully we would continue to improve products and make exciting products for people to use.



[Shane]
Thank you John for your time today. We wish you all the best and are looking forward for to Windows Mobile 6 when it hits the stores.

[John Starkweather]
You are welcome.

Thanks for the pretty cool and informative interview. Hope the user experience weather ahead will be less stark and more conducive for WM diehards like us, especially in MS BT A2DP wave transmission - the sea has been rather rough with skippings and hissing aplenty that threathen to undo and sink any leisure listening ship that cared to sail on her.